


Lay Your Hands on Me

by crystalequinox



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angry Sex, Angst, Blood, Choking, Hux is manipulative, M/M, Violence, assholes kind of having feelings for each other, kylo ren falling apart, kylo ren tantrum
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-18 18:55:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5939563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crystalequinox/pseuds/crystalequinox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His face was not in sync with the jagged, red spew of plasma from the lightsaber or the thoughtless destruction he utilized it for. When he erupted into a tantrum, his expression was not one of a vengeful angel but instead the face of a broken child.</p><p>Perhaps that was why he wore the mask.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Well here I am in the dumpster friends, I hope you enjoy. Also every single Nine Inch Nails song works perfectly for kylux.
> 
> The chapters of this fic will skip around between time pre/during/post-TFA because for some reason I can't hold together a strictly chronological story to save my life.

His anger was rippling, it bubbled over the surface and shivered though his lean frame.

His face though, his face was not in sync with the jagged, red spew of plasma from the lightsaber or the thoughtless destruction he utilized it for. When he erupted into a tantrum, his expression was not one of a vengeful angel but instead the face of a broken child.

Perhaps that was why he wore the mask.

Something between a roar and a choked cry ripped from his diaphragm and up his throat, vengeful and wet.

Raw and heavy with shame.

In his wake Ren left glowing scars across what were once computer panels, walls, navigation equipment, and furniture. Leaving them not only obsolete, but decimated. Standing in what used to be the knight’s private quarters on _The Finalizer_ , Hux couldn’t help but mentally calculate more credits worth of damage costs as Kylo Ren stood there among the heap of slashed bed, mangled furniture, obliterated light fixtures, and the trademark gashed walls in his post rage, quivering.

Each breath taken and released bodily.

The medic droids that had been attending to him had long since scattered out, or at least the ones still in working condition, Hux noted as he observed the sputtering wreckage of what used to be a GH-7 unit.

Here he was, an overly qualified baby sitter for a large, emotionally wounded child.  

“If you’re quite finished destroying my ship-“

Ren turned to him like an animal that had been spooked suddenly, loose tendrils of curls clung to his forehead, his cheekbones, sweat slick. Eyes wild and pink tinged with pupils full, round and heavy. Hopelessly wet, ready to spill. Between them a rift of angry skin, the saber burn scar that Kylo Ren hadn’t let heal yet.

He was the perfect picture of a human disaster.

The glow of his buzzing, erratic lightsaber threw shades of florescent red across his pallid skin, setting his sensitive face aflame. 

_Beautiful._

Hux swallowed the ridiculous sentiment.

Hux liked order, he liked routine, he liked accountability, he liked polished and pressed. None of which applied to Kylo Ren.

The lightsaber continued to hum threateningly as Kylo Ren wavered before him, clothing half-hazzardly thrown on his feverish body. His usual loose fitting black trousers, arm padding unhooked where it was supposed to connect between his shoulder blades and heaving chest, leaving the defined span of his torso exposed.

“I would suggest you-“

With a zipping sound he swung his blade in a weak arc into the triangular bedside table, turning what had only been a minor repair into a full on replacement.

“ _I_ suggest you leave!” He rasped.

Now he saw the black syrupy substance trickling from Ren’s side, crimson blooming under bandages. His wounds had reopened in the fit of rage. 

Lips pursed, Hux unclasped his hands from behind his back and took three quick strides towards Kylo Ren, who’s eyes widened as he faltered back, bumping into the lip of the askew bed, barely holding his balance, he shut the saber off. 

Firmly, Hux planted both hands on either side of on Kylo Ren’s muscle-hard shoulders and pushed him roughly down to a sitting position on the bed, Ren winced and pressed a hand to the patch of blood soaked bandage above his hip.

“I would suggest you rest before facing Supreme Leader Snoke and embarrassing yourself any further.”

The knight looked hastily away and brought a hand up to examine the blood.

“Fuck you.” He choked out past clenched teeth

Somehow it had become his unspoken task to oversee this immature terror since leaving Starkiller base.

No, before that. 

It had been his idea to put the tracker on Ren, and for good reason.

Hux had sent out a platoon of men with him to look for the knight, when he should have had himself securely on the transport ship while the search was conducted, but he had to go himself, to see what had become of that faint red dot on his data pad, sick with the loss of his greatest achievement as the earth jolting and roared beneath him.

Sick with something else, perhaps. Something that he couldn’t quite name, but something that sent him scrambling through the snow willing that damned blinking dot not to blip into nothing.

It was he who had found Kylo Ren, a crumpled failure on a rift of an imploding planet.

He had been lying there, barely conscious in the snow, skin cold as the ice beneath him, half dead already. Bloodstained snow smattered around his useless form. Marred and defeated by a novice, a skinny nobody, a _scavenger_.

Without the vibrant light of the saber, Ren’s quarters were dimmed considerably; the few undamaged soft florescent glow set in strips against the walls emitted only enough light to make out vague features on the Knight’s face now.

And his hand was drifting feather light from shoulder to neck, up to his face, to trace leather fingertips just next to the scar, and Ren didn’t move, rigid, fists full of loose bed sheet fabric in his hands now bloodstained from the wound--or had they always been bloodstained--until a gloved hand found its way into his hair and soundlessly his lips parted and he leaned his head into the touch, maybe with just a little hope that it wouldn’t retract, and perhaps fearing that it may not.

_You petulant, unstable thing, I almost lost you._

And then another hand, thumb over his lips, then knuckles lifting his chin and those watery eyes now devoid of rage and filled with…with what?

Without the rage his eyes were clouded as they had been for days, he drifted between an enforced pain medicated haze and manic fits when he was able to refuse it for long enough, usually prattling on in half spoken thoughts about pain giving him strength until he calmed enough to be sedated once again. 

“Let yourself heal. You’re useless to The Order this way.” He had meant the words to sound taunting, but they came out too tender, too caring.

And then Hux was leaning down closer, grip suddenly tight on Kylo’s hair, his too long, too messy, too soft mop of unruly hair as he tugged his head back and it was smooth lips against chapped and a knee, teasingly against groin and long fingered hands came to the general’s hips, pulling at the fabric of his pants, to pull him closer, to hold onto something desperately as he easily let a tongue slip into his mouth, no resistance, no fight, no pride in it and he groaned from a mixture of arousal and pain from his bleeding wound and-

The kissing stopped.

Hux was pulling away.

Smoothing out his uniform, his hair.

“Have that wound checked.”

It disturbed him, to see Kylo Ren in this shattered state. 

For Kylo Ren to let himself be seen this way.

Hux was leaving the room, not looking back.

Not looking back at this exposed version of Kylo Ren. The Kylo Ren that had perhaps always been under the surface of his wrath.

Breathless, conflicted, and pathetic.

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

“Pathetic.”

The low vibrations of the voice distortion mechanism in the mask came from behind. So close, he could feel the reverberations on the back of his neck, his skin prickled.

He had steeled himself for it, able to hear the sound of Kylo Ren’s quick strides a mile away, the clunking of his heavy boots down hallways, across ramps. Like everything about him it was unnecessarily dramatic.

Even with the forewarning, the proximity was unsettling. 

“I sense a weakness in them.”

Hux swallowed.

A warmth ran down his spine to mellow low in his stomach, far from surprise or fear. Tightening his clasped hands behind his back, Hux continued to focus his attention below the windowed control room on the disembarking soldiers from the transport ship, fresh from the storm trooper training program to _The Finalizer’s_ forces.

“Captain Phasma will straighten out any undesirable traits that still persist in due time. Those who don’t make the cut will be quickly weeded out and sent to reconditioning.”

“Your strength is hollow, those troopers you have such faith in are nothing but pawns.”

Kylo Ren stooped somewhat when he stood, as if there was always something heavy on the back of his head, gravity pushing back just a tad against his monumental size. It wouldn’t bother him so much if only Ren understood personal space. He could almost feel Ren’s breathing from behind, the compression and expansion of his chest.  

Attempting to rein in his exasperation with the knight, Hux turned to face the cold, polished lines of Ren’s mask, “Yes quality over quantity. It takes soldiers to win wars, Ren. Pawns.”

A metallic huff. A sleight tilt of his head.

“Of course, General. A reasonable argument for one who hides behind pawns, barking orders.”

The flare of his temper kindled, but he wouldn’t let Kylo Ren get the better of him, wouldn’t let him see how his insides burned to watch the knight of Ren bleed out from a blaster wound, or better yet--choke on his own righteousness.

A righteousness that rivaled his own, but arose in the form of merciless destruction, of a massacred battlefield. Kylo Ren’s righteousness was a vicious animal on a short leash. Hux’s version was quiet, stealthy. It struck out in acute victories, in economy, in statistics, and in well-oiled machinery.

Unfortunately, the mask made Ren difficult to read; although Hux had the impression Ren wore some mocking expression from within the metalwork and apparatus.

Reading people was something he prided himself on, it was crucial in predicating the actions of those around him. Key to deciphering who was loyal, which overly ambitions subordinate should be sent on a particularly dangerous mission, or which politician—with a blasphemous platform—should be found floating in their luxury pool, bloated and dead from overdose or latent medical condition known only by loved ones.

Honestly, he had an itinerary of things more important to do than stand around bickering with a psychotic space magician.

Without a word, Hux sidestepped Ren’s imposing form, attempting to extricate himself without further prattle.

But no, he had to have the last word.

“Perhaps you’re a pawn yourself, the best sort are the ones who think themselves important.”

A hand struck out to roughly grasp his forearm and to his horror he inhaled sharply in an aroused gasp before he could clamp his mouth closed and smooth over his expression.

Kylo Ren’s hold was mercilessly tight, it would crinkle his pressed uniform, it would leave finger shaped bruises, it was an intolerant break in protocol.

It set him on fire.

The mask closed in, the breathing sounds rattled around his air space, buzzed in his face. 

“Oh yes, and you think yourself quite important, don’t you General?” 

 

***

 

He couldn’t help but hold onto some small belief, on good days—and a large belief on bad days, that Kylo Ren threw his galactic famous temper tantrums out of a mixture of spite and need for attention. The uncontrollable wrath left sparks flying and troopers fast walking in as dignified a manor as they could manage in the opposite direction. 

In the face of these outbursts, Hux had no such luxury.

“ _Ren._ ” 

It really wasn’t in his job description to police the Knight of Ren, but upon being alerted by personnel on the bridge that the revered toddler had destroyed a navigation terminal, there had to be some form of reprimand, even if it was of hollow consequence. 

And no one but himself was qualified to handle Kylo Ren’s wrath without suffering life-threatening consequences. 

At this point the exasperation outweighed the surprise of walking in to whiteness Lieutenant Mitaka dangling a yard in the air, suspended by Kylo Ren’s grip on his throat. 

The trashed navigation panel, still burning softly behind them the perfect backdrop metaphor to Ren’s crazy.

The man in question did not deign to even turn his head in the general’s direction, he continued to hold the young man in the air for a few moments while wet sounds crackled from Mitaka’s throat as he struggled for breath, his hands wriggling around the grasp on his neck in a futile attempt to escape. 

A warm, creeping sensation snaked up his body, imagining the feel of those large hands around his own throat, the strength of those ungainly limbs.

_“Ren, release him.”_

Not until his face began to fade from a pale fleshy hue to a disturbing shade of pink, to a plum, did Ren follow the order accordingly. Dropping the lieutenant in a splay of limbs as he gasped for air, undignified and desperate on the floor.

“Leave.” Hux commanded, and the boy scrambled up, nearly throwing himself into the hall, running out and probably all the way to medical.

 Wordlessly, Hux surveyed the damage to the navigation panel with distaste, “I had a hand in designing Starkiller Base, and here you are tearing away at it in bits. You do know it costs The First Order credits to fix these damages? Credits that could be better spent on actually furthering our initiative instead of cleaning up after your meltdowns.”

“Your men let them escape. _On a freighter._ ”

Something in Ren was on edge, more dangerous than usual. The air around him radiated with toiling rage. Potent enough that it felt to Hux as though the air in the room had thickened, although that might be the smoke from the wrecked navigation panels.

“Perhaps you should have gone back to Jakku yourself if you have such little faith in my men.”

“Perhaps you should do the dirty work yourself for once, _general_.”

This again.

He never had much of a drive for unnecessary violence, but Kylo Ren rightly deserved a chocking himself.

He nearly went against his better judgment in gracing him with a reply of equal witty contempt when his data pad beeped to alert him to an important message.

“There is an incoming transmission from Snoke. For both of us.”

  

***

 

His throat burned. The good way that a stiff drink does, settling on the tongue to travel like liquid fire down the esophagus and curl in the stomach.

The stiff drink he was having now.

It helped take the edge off.

So did the cigarette he was lighting.

He did not get nervous jitters from the thought of public speaking, quite the opposite—an audience encouraged him, empowered him. Tomorrow would be the reveal of years of proposal, work, research, and planning come to fruition. The set stage for a production that began before his lifetime, but one he would write the final act to. Although this performance would perhaps only be the rising action of the drama. Wherever it lay on the timeline of history, it would never be forgotten.   

He was watching the grey wisps of smoke encircle each other into nothing, envisioning the look of terror worn by the denizens of the republic as the brilliant red flare of their end approached, when the door to his office opened with a hushing sound.

And in stomped the very last person on the base that he wanted to see while off duty. Like he had some kind of damed intuition as to the absolute best time to ruin his mood.

In fact, he actually might, what with that ‘force’ bullshit.

Spirituality had never played a role in his life. Placing trust in an unseen, intangible, and dead faith seemed a waste of time.

Although he could far from deny the power those sensitive to it wrought. Those people, he would like to harness.

“Is there something I can help you with, Ren?” 

In a few thunderous paces he had crossed from the door to the desk.

“Drinking? At a crucial time like this?” The mask voice came out in that almost insulting mechanical monotone.

No, it _was_ insulting.

“ _You_ have no luxury to patronize me.” He picked up the crystal glass and took another sip of amber liquid for emphasis. Although for some ludicrous reason it irked him that Kylo Ren thought he was doing something inappropriate in accordance with his station.

In every way that Kylo Ren was chaotic, he by contrast was methodic. From dejarik games as a child to battle strategy tactics to the creases of his uniform and shine on his belt buckle. He not only followed procedures to a tee, but brutally enforced them. It wasn’t as if his actions were even against protocol, being off duty.

Although, ‘off duty’ didn’t hold much gravity to a man in his position, it was more like being unofficially on call. He took no issue with it, this was the favorable trajectory of his career, already one of the youngest generals in the Empire’s brief but grand history. Besides, he had navigated The Academy after much harder nights of drinking than this would ever compare to. Of course the challenge hadn’t been the classes, not the intelligence training or the combat, it had been the unofficial lessons of twisting people around your finger while they thought you were getting fucked. 

He had been keenly adept at it. Even had many of the professors eating out of his hands, some quite literally. It had gone in much the same manor during his time in service to the remnants of the Empire and now to the Order.

Kylo Ren was the one wild card he could not force into any sort of regularity or submission. Hadn’t found any soft spots to dig his claws into. 

Not yet.

“What is the progress on your weapon?”

Withholding a sigh, Hux set his drink carefully on the table with a light _clink_ and made a sweeping motion across his data pad to shoo away the reports he had been working on and pull up the sidebar that displayed data on the weapon, “At the moment, 76% capacity, it will be charged well before tomorrow’s ceremony.”

Kylo Ren continued to stand ominously before the desk, in perhaps what he hoped was an intimidating manor. Hux knew beneath that mask, manic eyes were on him.  

“Satisfied?” He set the data pad down and tapped the end of his cigarette on the ash disposal plate. 

He was met with only silence and the constant ridiculousness of Kylo Ren’s mask. 

“Oh for the love of—if you’re just going to stare broodingly would you take that silly mask off?”

“Why?” The question drawn out, “Does it unnerve you?”

_It annoys me._

“Hardly.” 

“And why should I indulge you?”

“That’s what you call it?”

Setting down the ember bud of his cigarette, Hux finished off his drink and rose from his seat, taking his glass with him to refill it from the conservative collection of libations he kept in a sleek black cabinet in his office. Not in his room, it would be too tempting to access regularly there. From behind, he heard the click and whisper hiss of the mechanisms of Kylo Ren’s mask, and grimaced down at his glass at the defeaning thunk of the thing against his desk. 

He hadn’t realized it was so heavy.

 _Like a crown._  

Hux took his time refilling the glass, not wanting to seem too eager for a gander at the face of the infamous Knight of Ren. The face of the man who had slaughtered a bright new generation of Jedi. Hux had to admit, begrudgingly, that he was quite curious to see it, and he took a drink of his now refilled glass before turning. 

_Of course his was against regulation._

Considering the constant compression from the helmet, it looked surprisingly lush, well cared for. What would it feel like, if he ran his fingers though it? If he pulled—hard—what kind of sound would Ren make?

He took another drink from the glass.

“So you _are_ human.”

Ren was already sweeping the dark thicket away from his forehead, like a self-conscious habit. There was an openness in the subtle pout of his full, feminine lips, his heavy dark pupils. It placed him somewhere between pleasing and uncomfortable to look at.

“What did you expect?”

“Something half wookie, considering the size of you.”

Ren had no more than two inches on him, but his presence filled a room. His exact height Hux had found in the profile reports mandatory of all First Order officers. Information on Ren was sparsely supplied. His report, unlike everyone else’s, did not include a likeness for identification. Not even a masked one. 

The knight tilted his head slightly, darkly humored. 

Hux felt a prickling at the back of his neck, a wrongness pressing in on this temple. Like a headache but far more disturbing. He pressed back against it, having been trained by his father to defend himself against these mental intrusions of force users, just in case. 

“The force is indifferent to species, gender, sexuality. All the things you little people use to set yourselves apart.” 

It took a grand amount of self-control not to roll his eyes. He finished off the glass, turned to refill it.

“I wouldn’t give a damn if you were a wampa. Too bad, what with all that superior cosmic power and you can’t go a week without throwing a temper tantrum like a spoiled child.” 

Well that may have been a tad over the line of professional, but it seemed to break Ren’s concentration because the pressure withdrew.

There was little time to react to the quick, stomping pace, the hand on his shoulder, turning him roughly and then- 

A numb impact. The sound of his glass shattering, the contents—still a good mouthful—he had yet to drink wasted. Another of Kylo Ren’s messes to clean up. And then as an afterthought the pain shot though his skull and began to pulse with increasing intensity as his mouth filled with a coppery taste. He spit the blood onto the reflective, obsidian surface of the floor, disgusting but better than letting it drool from his lips, undignified. Upon examination via tongue he was glad to find the collision hadn’t knocked any teeth loose.

Which meant Kylo had pulled his punch.

A snarl, “Getting soft on me, are you Ren?”

It did hurt, like hell, but he refused to let Ren know the extent. 

He was safe. In a sense. Ren had yet to take the life of an officer, or even a trooper, on purpose, he was desperate to prove himself as loyal to The Supreme Leader and it was unlikely he would take the life of a commanding officer in his fits of rage.

“I suppose I could cover this blemish with cosmetics, awful timing with the ceremony tomorrow.”

Provoking Ren was still dangerous. And yet there was a miraculous beauty in the way his lips quivered with rage, his eyes taking on an impossibly darker shade as the anger swelled within him, his expression now open to Hux, who gleaned far more sick satisfaction from it than he should have.

“Striking your commanding officer, do you ever think before acting? What an awful child you must have been to manage.”

Ren reached for him and Hux couldn’t help but wince as he was hauled upward and then slammed against the wall.

“You’re out of line, general.”

_You’re one to talk._

It wouldn’t do well for this altercation to end in a way that attracted attention, nor would it do well for his image to attend the destruction of worlds and crippling of the republic with a black and blue face as he delivered his speech ato the masses of the First Order forces, and so logically he should dismantle the tension immediately. 

And yet, he was onto something here, an entry point to Kylo Ren’s downfall. The thin strings to puppeteer this feral creature.

So he would take a calculated risk. Hux’s lips curled into something like a smile, but more malicious, “Did mummy not love you enough?”

Kylo Ren’s features rippled with a resurfacing wound.

_Ah, that’s it._

Ren’s grip tightened enough to sufficiently shut off his air supply, and more importantly his words, the only weapon he currently had on hand.

The pain of those gloved fingers around his throat miexed with another sensation, the two curling in his stomach treacherously.

“You seem so smug, pretending you don’t fear for your life. But I can feel…” 

With his free hand Kylo Ren lifted fingers to reach into Hux’s mind, and the general for a moment lost his composure, going wide eyed.

It was no gentle browsing, he had watched Kylo Ren during sessions of mental tourcher, seen the excruciating resistance of his victims, and he was no exception. Ren’s mental touch was as brutal as his physical one, he plunged in mercilessly, past Hux’s walls and there it was laid bare for him to see, explicitly.

The mirth in Kylo Ren’s expression fell away to blindsided shock, like he was the one who had been struck. 

And the Knight dropped him suddenly, almost stumbling backwards in disgusted revelation.

With the back of his gloved hand, Hux wiped at his blood stained lip, ineffectively smearing the warm gore across his chin instead of removing anything. Eyes adverted from the shocked Knight of Ren, he examined the blood on his hand, unable to feel the wetness of it through the padding of the glove. 

This would ruin him. 

Finally, Hux deigned to look up at the exposed face of Kylo Ren, expecting to see revolution, to see a condescendence, to see anything but the dead seriousness painted across his features. 

“You like it.”

Straightening up to what he hoped was the proper composure of a general, Hux sneered, “Don’t be absurd.”

The denial was obvious and empty, if that blathering force talk was true, Kylo Ren had not only seen it, but had _felt_ it. 

But Ren was taking firm steps towards him again, and Hux steeled for the second impact, refusing to flinch in front of this holy child. Instead of a blow came the careful, spidery feel of a hand up his collar and then long fingers closing over his throat, and the oncoming proximity of Kylo Ren’s gargantuan form. Hux pushed his hands up and out to Kylo’s chest to keep their hips from coming into contact. A heat ran through his blood thick and dangerous as Kylo Ren applied just enough pressure to his throat to make breathing that much more difficult.

In such close proximity, he was forced to look up at that stupid fucking face.   That plain, sensitive face.

“I know you like when I do this to you, general.”

He did.

And now his rival had a weakness to exploit.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed! I'm literally falling asleep right now but I've been wanting to post this chapter super bad, more to come.


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